


I'm Looking Through You

by daftalchemist



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Anal Sex, Body Horror, Fluff and Smut, M/M, Slime, shapeshifter!cecil, sort of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-12
Updated: 2013-12-12
Packaged: 2018-01-04 09:57:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,855
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1079600
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/daftalchemist/pseuds/daftalchemist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A mysterious illness causes Cecil's body to fall apart, and Carlos seems unable to find a way to stop it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I'm Looking Through You

**Author's Note:**

> beta thanks to tumblr user her-candyness

“Cecil.”

“Hmm?”

Carlos gestured with his fork towards the radio host. “Your ear.”

“Mmhmm?” Cecil responded, continuing to eat his dinner before it thought better about being eaten and decided to run off.

“Cecil, _please_ ,” Carlos insisted. “Your _ear_.”

“What _about_ it, Carlos?” Cecil asked, rolling his eyes at Carlos’ seemingly needless urgency.

“ _It’s falling off your head, Cecil_ ,” he responded, frustrated beyond all measure. How could he not feel it happening?

Cecil finally reached up, feeling his ear. Sure enough, it was slipping farther and farther down the side of his face. “ _Oh_.”

“Yeah, ‘ _oh_ ’,” said Carlos, putting down his fork, not really feeling like eating the rest of his roast while watching his boyfriend lose a body part in his kitchen. “Can you fix that? Do you need...I don’t know, medical attention or something?”

Cecil prodded at it experimentally. It _seemed_ to move freely enough, and he pushed it back up where it belonged. It stayed, but sagged down just a hair. “Um, I think I’m okay.”

“You _think_?” Carlos ran a hand through his hair with a sigh. “Do you not know?Has this ever happened before?”

“I don’t _think_ so,” Cecil said as he fussed at the ear, making it worse rather than better. “It seems like something I would remember though, so...I guess not?”

“Here, let me see that,” Carlos said and scooted his chair closer to Cecil’s, pulling his hand away from his lopsided ear and attempting to straighten it himself. “Is this normal though? Should I be as worried as I am?”

Cecil didn’t answer, his cheeks blushed faintly purple under the intense gaze of Carlos’ dark brown eyes, so full of concern. He reached out and stroked his cheek.

“You’re not listening, are you?” Carlos said, taking Cecil’s hand in his own and giving it a squeeze. “This is _serious_ , Cecil! Is this _normal_?”

“Oh, I...don’t know,” he replied, coming back to his senses. “It’s definitely something that’s just happened though, so...maybe?”

The conversation was going around in circles so quickly that Carlos was beginning to feel dizzy. He placed his free hand on Cecil’s cheek, knowing it would keep his attention. “How can you not know? It’s your body, after all.”

“Well, of course it’s _mine_ , silly,” Cecil said with a smile. “But it _changes_ , you know. A _lot_. It’s hard to tell what’s normal for it.”

Carlos hung his head with a weary sigh. “You’re going to give me gray hairs, Cecil.”

Cecil giggled and ran his fingers through Carlos’ shaggy locks. “But you already have gray hairs.”

“You’re going to give me _more_ gray hairs,” Carlos smirked and pulled him into his lap, kissing him, and Cecil melted against him with a soft moan. Carlos pulled back with a smile that quickly died on his lips. “Cecil, your _nose_.”

“What?” he said, and his hands flew to his nose, which was significantly closer to his lip then it should have been. “ _Oh_ no. Fix it for me?”

Carlos sighed and pushed it back up into place. “This isn’t okay, Cecil. This...I can’t keep just _fixing_ your face and pretending like it’s fine.”

Cecil grinned and pressed himself down against Carlos’ lap. “Can you pretend it’s fine for a _little_ while longer, at least?”

“You know I can’t,” Carlos groaned, placing his hands on the radio host’s hips to keep him from trying to entice him further. “I’m _worried_ about you. You’re... _melting_ right in front of my eyes! I can’t do anything to you in good conscience without knowing if this is really okay or not.”

“But I’m pretty sure it’s fine!” Cecil insisted, wrapping his arms around Carlos’ neck and nuzzling at his jaw. “ _Please_ , just ignore it.”

Carlos ran his fingers through Cecil’s hair, doing his best to ignore how many strands of it wound up wrapping around his fingers and pulling free, and hugged him close. “I can’t do that, querido. I’m too worried. I just...I want to _fix_ this.”

Cecil pulled away, refusing to meet Carlos’ gaze, and he sighed. “What do you want to do?”

“I’d like to run some tests, of course,” he said as he placed his hands on Cecil’s chin and tilted his head up to capture his full attention. “Would you let me do that?”

He pouted. “What kind of tests?”

“Nothing major,” Carlos assured him. “I’d only take a tissue sample,  maybe a blood sample. Normal stuff, I promise. I’m not looking to turn you into a lab project.”

Cecil shrugged, rubbing his thumb idly against the back of Carlos’ neck. “If it’ll make you feel better.”

“I’m hoping it’ll help make _you_ feel better,” he responded with a kind smile, though it didn’t seem to assuage Cecil’s pout. Carlos sighed and pushed his lower lip back up into place, holding it steady to give him a soft kiss. “I’ll find a way to fix you.”

* * *

The tests were inconclusive. It was hardly a shock. Aside from not really knowing what he was testing for, Carlos also didn’t have much of an idea of _what_ he was testing. Cecil’s cells were...they were _weird_ , to say the least, and he had no way of knowing if they had been weird before the drooping facial features incident, or if it was a more recent thing. He was a shapeshifter after all. Carlos had no way of telling what state they had been in originally. Cecil bounced excitedly on the balls of his feet at the news, grinning from ear to ear, _literally_.

“So that means I’m fine, right?” he asked as he slipped his arms around Carlos’ waist and nuzzled at his neck. “And that you can touch me again?”

“That’s not what it means at all,” Carlos groaned, tossing a notepad with pages of confused writing on his desk. “It _means_...it just means I don’t know what I’m doing.”

“You _always_ know what you’re doing,” Cecil grinned, pressing himself flush against the scientist. “There’s just nothing to find because _nothing is wrong_.”

“You don’t _know_ that, Cecil,” Carlos insisted as he stroked the radio host’s cheek. “ _I_ don’t know that.”

“Your tests know, and they say there’s nothing wrong,” Cecil pouted before standing on his tip toes to ghost his lips over Carlos’. “So _please_ stop worrying?”

Carlos rolled his eyes with a sigh. “All right.” He hoisted Cecil onto his desk and kissed him softly. “You’ve convinced me. I’ll stop worrying.”

He started worrying a week later when they were shopping at the Ralph’s, and a horrifying amount of viscous purple blood began oozing from Cecil’s nose. He tried to make it seem normal, he _always_ got nosebleeds like that when comparing cereal prices, but he didn’t have an explanation for the blood dripping steadily from his ear, or the small amount trickling from the corners of his mouth. Carlos rushed him to the lab without a moment’s hesitation, leaving their basket full of groceries in the middle of the aisle despite Cecil’s insistence that they needed to buy milk. The milk could wait; his boyfriend falling apart in a horrific manner could not.

The second round of tests were as inconclusive as the first, moreover there was no noticeable change in Cecil’s blood and tissue samples. He was just...falling apart with no sign as to why, and without information as to what was causing it, there was no way Carlos was going to be able to fix it, and he _needed_ to fix it. He couldn’t just watch Cecil literally waste away.

The bleeding stopped almost as quickly as it had started, and Cecil immediately grinned and shrugged it off, just as cheery as he’d been the last time his body began rejecting parts of itself.

“See?” he said, all smiles and smears of dried blood on his lips and neck. “I’m fine. It’s probably just allergies.”

Carlos frowned thoughtfully as he checked his purple-stained ears over again. “Do you have allergies?”

“Well, no,” Cecil responded, sounding significantly less sure of himself. “But that doesn’t mean they wouldn’t affect me.”

Carlos sighed and pulled him into a gentle hug. “That’s exactly what it means, Cecil.”

“Oh,” he said, his voice shaking with fear, as it should have been since that first night in Carlos’ kitchen. He wrapped his arms around Carlos and buried his face against his shoulder, and Carlos ran a hand through Cecil’s hair as he ignored the thick, purple fluid trickling slowly from his ear.

“It’ll be alright,” he whispered, and kissed the top of Cecil’s head. “I promise it’ll be alright.”

* * *

It wasn’t alright though, it was worse almost every day, and Carlos was no closer to finding answers. He didn’t even know what he was doing. He wasn’t a doctor, so the mysteries of the body were more than just a little beyond his grasp. More than that, Cecil wasn’t even _human_ , so he had no basis for comparison. He had _no idea_ if what he was seeing under the microscope was normal or not, because none of it was normal compared to a human sample. He sighed and rubbed his eyes, wishing yet again that he’d taken samples _before_ this had happened, just for study, just so he’d know how to help him if anything like this happened. Instead he was huddling over a microscope in his lab, killing himself slowly from lack of sleep and gut-gnawing worry as he stared entirely too long at blood samples that weren’t giving him any answers, listening to some inept intern fumble through every word on the radio, and…

Wait.

Inept intern?

Carlos immediately checked the clock, which was stubbornly insisting it was early in the morning, but he knew better. He knew what time it was: it was time for Cecil’s show, and Cecil wasn’t on it. He’d told Cecil to go home and get some rest, but...he’d never expected he would actually _listen_. Cecil _never_ missed his show, no matter how sick he got. Carlos grabbed his keys and was out the door before the intern could even finish explaining how they hadn’t heard from their absent radio host all day.

Carlos had no idea how long he spent driving to Cecil’s apartment, hoping the intern would talk more about what he knew about Cecil’s whereabouts and angrily cursing each time he began to talk about the community calendar or whatever unimportant life-threatening thing was happening in Night Vale. There was only one life he was concerned about saving that night; the rest of the town could wait or even die for all he cared. There was someone much more important that he needed to save.

He pounded on Cecil’s door and desperately called his name, but heard nothing in response, and he panicked. What if he’d actually fallen apart? Just melted into his carpet and no one had even been there to help him? Carlos barely even had the time to register what he was doing before he’d summoned all his strength and kicked the door in, wincing at the splintered wood of the doorframe. He’d pay for repairs later. Besides, he was sure Cecil would understand, as soon as he found him.

Carlos had never really been to Cecil’s apartment before, but it was small, and it didn’t take Carlos long to find Cecil sitting in the kitchen, his head hanging so low, and his skin…

“Cecil,” Carlos breathed as he rushed over to him, gently touching a hand to his cheek. “You’re... _pink_.”

And he was, or rather, whatever inhuman looking organs his body contained were a dark enough maroon color to tint his nearly translucent skin a very soft pink. Cecil smiled, barely, and reached out to touch Carlos’ cheek, his flesh sagging heavily, practically dripping off of him.

“Carlos,” he said happily, but his voice had a noticeable tremble to it as he touched the scientist’s cheek and his fingers smushed against his skin. “I wasn’t expecting you.”

Carlos wrapped his hand around Cecil’s, but pulled away in shock when it began to sink into his flesh. Cecil whimpered silently as he pulled his hand away, staring at it with glazed eyes.

“Oh, Cecil,” Carlos sighed, doing his best not to show how worried he was as he gently prodded Cecil’s nose back into place. “I _had_ to come see why you didn’t make it to work. What happened?”

Cecil held up his hand, and Carlos tried not to look horrified as the flesh sagged from his fingertips, partly because it was exposing his bones, and partly because Carlos had no idea what the bone-looking things actually were.

“I tried to open the door,” Cecil began, dropping his hand between his knees with a sigh, “but my skin just...squished against the knob, and I couldn’t turn it.”

Carlos took Cecil’s hand in his and ran his finger over it, pushing the weird, jelly-like skin around, and Cecil muffled another whimper with his other equally melted hand.

“I tried to call the station,” he continued, “but my fingers can’t work the touch screen.”

Carlos gave Cecil’s hand a gentle squeeze as he stood. “We should get you to the lab.”

Cecil nodded morosely, but didn’t attempt to move. He _couldn’t_ move, Carlos realized, being unable to push himself out of the chair, so Carlos grabbed hold of his forearm and tried to pull him out up. His fingers sank into Cecil’s flesh, deeper than they had while he was holding his hand, and Cecil groaned low in his throat.

“Oh, god, Cecil!” Carlos shouted, immediately letting go of his arm and kneeling in front of him, trying to pull Cecil’s hand away from his face so he could see what kind of pain he was in, but...he was blushing. Or at least Carlos _assumed_ he was blushing. His cheeks were a darker color than the rest of his mostly colorless skin, and he didn’t seem to be in any pain, but what Carlos assumed was Cecil’s heart was beating _incredibly_ fast, and…

 _Oh_.

He pressed his fingers into Cecil’s arms again, slowly but still much deeper than last time, watching the digits twitch and curl deep within Cecil’s body, feeling his own cheeks darken as Cecil shuddered and whined. He pressed the fingers upwards, parting Cecil’s flesh around them as he slid them up towards where his collarbone traditionally should have been, and Cecil threw his head back with a shout. Carlos quickly pulled his fingers free of Cecil’s body and pressed them against his cheek.

“Cecil!” he shouted in alarm. “Are you okay?”

He nodded and moaned softly, grasping at Carlos’ lab coat as best his melting fingers would allow him and trying to pull him closer. It wasn’t until Cecil’s hand was flattening against Carlos’ groin that he realized his own heart rate had gone through the roof, and he was experiencing an aching need that honestly scared him. He gingerly wrapped his fingers around Cecil’s wrist and pulled his hand away.

“Cecil, don’t,” he said, his guilt winning out over his growing interest in seeing just how far he could drive Cecil into pleasure with just a press of his finger. “You’re not well.”

But Cecil only glared daggers at him as he slipped his hand beneath the waistband of Carlos’ pants, his fingers practically pouring themselves into his boxers, and his dick twitched in interest at the odd sensation.

“Cecil!” Carlos insisted, but was quickly cut off as Cecil thrust two fingers into Carlos’ mouth, letting them melt against his tongue, and Carlos couldn’t deny that it wasn’t an unpleasant experience.

“ _Touch me_ ,” Cecil hissed, and Carlos found he had run out of excuses not to.

He found a way to pull Cecil out of the chair a moment later, dipping his fingers into his flesh as often and as deeply as he could as he tugged him into his lap. Cecil melted heavily against him, throwing his head back with a sob as every touch of Carlos’ fingers and clothes affected him so much more deeply than either of them could have expected. His heart was visibly pounding in his chest as his cheeks darkened to an almost unbelievable royal purple with no solid flesh in the way to mute the color.

Carlos peeled the melting radio host off of him with an impatient grunt and rested him against the chair he’d only just minutes before pried him out of so he could hastily remove his pants, as the agonized whimpering Cecil was doing becoming far too much to bear. He slid his hand against Cecil’s ass, dipping his fingers far deeper inside the radio host than he ever had before, and Cecil grasped the chair as tightly as his hands would allow as a deep moan shook his entire body.

“ _Carlos_ ,” he gasped, pressing himself against his hand as best he could, but Carlos had already removed his hand, and Cecil wailed as Carlos grasped him firmly by the hip and stuffed his cock inside him.

The sensation was unlike anything else, Cecil’s body conforming around him, sucking him deeper and deeper. And Carlos could see it; see his dick twitching inside him, see every movement as he rolled his hips once, just a little, just to experiment. It was incredible. _Cecil_ was incredible, the way he gasped and moaned from just the slightest thrust, babbling incoherently as he struggled to keep himself anchored to the chair, begging for more. But that niggling guilt kept Carlos rooted in place. His boyfriend was sick, _incredibly_ sick, and he was about to take advantage of him like that?

Cecil forced himself upright, melting further around Carlos’ dick, and Carlos couldn’t help the pleasured groan that slipped past his lips. Cecil chuckled and leaned back, much farther than he probably should have been able to when he _wasn’t_ a shivering mass of jelly, and pressed his soft lips to Carlos’, touching his cheek as he smiled.

“Please,” he whispered, and the barely contained need in his voice wiped all feelings of guilt from Carlos’ mind.

He thrust into him, sinking much deeper into Cecil’s body than he’d expected to, and panicked for just a second before Cecil’s pleasured cry snapped him back to attention. He wrapped an arm around his chest as he thrust again, careful not to hold him too tightly, not wanting to lose track of where his fingers ended up while he was so focused on every roll of his hips, every thrill that shot up his spine as he watched his cock slide against his boyfriend’s insides, and the exact way Cecil reacted to each slight movement. Carlos reached his other hand down to where Cecil’s dick normally would have been and pressed his hand into him, swirling his fingers around, touching the few inhuman organs there until he brushed past one that made Cecil _scream_ and slump back against him, his chest heaving as he shuddered and gasped for breath.

“ _Again_!” he insisted, and Carlos immediately wrapped his fingers around it, massaging it gently. Cecil shivered and wailed, his body slumping further and further, puddling in Carlos’ lap as he thrust in time with each brush of his fingers until Cecil stiffened with an agonized cry, his body tightening suddenly around Carlos. He pressed his forehead to Cecil’s shoulder, moaning deeply through his orgasm as he watched thick white strings of cum burst into Cecil’s body, the sight of it almost enough to make him want to go again, if he wasn’t already being milked dry by his whimpering, jellied boyfriend.

Carlos cradled Cecil in his arms as best he could, but he was much less solid than he had been when they’d started. He gently pressed a hand to his cheek, doing his absolute best to keep from pushing inwards. Cecil smiled at him, exhausted but very happy, and Carlos smiled back.

“Can I please take you to the lab now?” he asked, and Cecil nodded sleepily in response.

* * *

Tests didn’t show anything useful, though Carlos was hardly surprised by that. What he _was_ surprised by was how Cecil seemed to get better all on his own after Carlos took him back to his place, unwilling to let Cecil return home and waste away alone. In just two weeks Cecil was almost completely solid again, his organs no longer visible, and even his shapeshifting abilities even beginning to function normally again. It was a miracle, and Carlos couldn’t be happier, but...he had to admit that a part of him would miss watching as he sunk his dick into Cecil’s translucent body. He would never admit to it though, not even under duress.

Cecil began complaining that he wanted to go home, go back to work. He felt like he was taking advantage of Carlos’ kindness and wanted to get back to his own life, and Carlos saw no reason to stop him, but insisted he thoroughly investigate the station and his apartment first. Taking him out of those environments had helped him get better, after all, and Carlos refused to let him go back until he knew the cause of all of this.

Cecil was caught completely off guard some days later when Carlos came storming into the house, out of breath and dealing with what was either anger or fear, and holding some bright yellow device in his hand.

“Did you... _run_ here? From my apartment?” Cecil asked from where he had been relaxing and reading the newspaper on the couch.

Carlos dropped the device heavily on the coffee table and crossed his arms, glaring sternly down at Cecil.

“How long has your apartment been registering on a Geiger counter?” he asked, but Cecil just stared at him in complete confusion. “ _Radiation_ , Cecil! The levels in your apartment are _ridiculous_! No wonder your body started deteriorating! Why are you even living there?”

“Oh, that,” Cecil said, grinning. “It’s always been like that.”

Carlos stared at him for a minute, expecting some joke to follow because there was no way someone would just _smile_ about living in an irradiated building.

“What do you mean ‘ _always_ ’, Cecil? You knew about it when you signed the lease?”

His grin widened. “Well, of course! It was one of the selling points for the apartment.”

Carlos stared at him a moment longer before he shook his head and sighed. “Grab your shoes. We’re getting my key copied and buying you new clothes.”

“But...why?”

“Because you’re moving in with me, that’s why,” Carlos shouted. “I’m not letting you live in that apartment anymore.”

Cecil leaped off of the couch and threw his arms around Carlos. “Of _course_ I’ll move in with you, Carlos! I can hardly believe this is happening so quickly!”

Carlos' frustration melted away instantly, and he smiled softly as he returned the hug, burying his nose in Cecil’s hair. “Yeah, it’s pretty sudden, I guess. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you did this on purpose.”

“Oh, don’t be silly,” Cecil replied. “I wasn’t able to afford that much radioactive material.”


End file.
